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Sold out! Tickets for Elton John's second show in Napier gone in an hour

Author
Doug Laing, Hawke's Bay Today,
Publish Date
Fri, 15 Feb 2019, 1:48PM
Elton John's two concerts could be one of Hawke's Bay's biggest ever events. Photo / Getty
Elton John's two concerts could be one of Hawke's Bay's biggest ever events. Photo / Getty

Sold out! Tickets for Elton John's second show in Napier gone in an hour

Author
Doug Laing, Hawke's Bay Today,
Publish Date
Fri, 15 Feb 2019, 1:48PM

Mission Estate has confirmed that Elton John's second show in Napier has sold out.

The Febuary 6 show had fully sold out in an hour, with both Gold Reserved and General Addmission gone.

Many fans were faced with more than an hour waiting in the Mission's Queue-it system within 60 seconds of them going on sale to Concert Club members at noon today.

Promoters announced that due to "phenomenal" demand for tickets to his February 8 concert next year, leaving thousands of people on "Mission Concert Wait List", he would now also do a Napier show two days earlier, on Waitangi Day.

Sir Elton will become only the second star to do two Mission Concerts in Napier.

Mission Estate Winery CEO Peter Holley stressed: "It's the artist's decision that makes them available. It's effectively the case that Elton John has agreed to this."

The only star to appear twice at the Mission since Dame Kiri Te Kanawa wowed the first crowd in 1993 is rock and roller Rod Stewart, who first appeared in 2005 and returned in 2014 for a show in front of the record crowd of about 26,000.

An-online queue stretching to 50,000 tried to buy tickets to the first show, with Mission admitting 4 per cent of people trying to buy tickets were bumped to the back of the queue because of a fault caused by overloading.

This time around Mission removed the mechanism showing how many people were online in the queue.

Mission's two shows are part of a now four-show New Zealand leg of the Farewell Yellow Brick Road world tour of more than 300 concerts in 18 months, which started last September.

Holley said that settling around 25,000 people at each show with a combined total of 50,000 would put the Mission's event in the realms of the biggest concerts held anywhere in the world.

The biggest crowd for any other event in Hawke's Bay is thought to have been for a Hawke's Bay Ranfurly Shield era rugby match against Wellington in the 1960s.

"This is certainly an exciting time," he said. "We've never had two concerts back-to-back like this before. To be overwhelmed by the initial demand and leave so many disappointed...We thought if we could we'd like to offer a second opportunity. The decision has only just been made."

Turning 72 next month, Elton John is currently performing mainly indoor concerts in the dead of a US winter, with 18, some back-to-back, over the next month before heading to Europe in May.

Elton and his band were to have had a four-day break before the Mission concert but will now have four shows within 6 nights in New Zealand, opening in Dunedin on February 4 and signing-off in Auckland 24 hours after his last gig in Napier.

Expanding the tours is nothing new for the British superstar, promoters on Wednesday announcing nine additions to an Australian schedule now comprising 24 concerts in 32 days from November 30 to February 1.

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